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Tuesday, 22 April 2014

#CountryKids Easter Eggs and Woollen Woods at Sizergh Castle

For my family its not Easter without an Easter Egg hunt at the National Trust! My daughter went with my parents on Saturday but as we were away my son and I had to wait until yesterday to go... Our destination was Sizergh Castle just down the road. At this time of year its a beautiful place to visit so everyone is happy. On handing over our £2 we were given a quiz sheet and a world map and told where to start the trail. My son was off like a shot:

Each clue was about countries this year and there were flags with country names on. There was a question to answer each time and we had to mark the country on the map (younger children just counted flags!). My son just about gave me time to look at the beautiful flowers whilst he wrote the answers down:

It was a challenge for me to help my son with the world map. As he is only 7 his knowledge of maps isn't exactly huge and he wasn't even sure where the United Kingdom was (hopefully he does now!), he seemed to only recognise Russia which is sort of bizarre...

Being regulars to the castle made following the clues pretty easy as my son knew where the bee hives etc were. He just needed to read off the information boards to find the answer:

I sneaked in some more flower photography of the gorgeous bellis perennis or double daisy:

The next clue was finding the nationality of 3 of the rare breed chickens that are kept at Sizergh:

To make sure we didn't get lost there were plenty of helpful signs to point us in the right direction:

Finding the answer in the rock garden sent not just us but plenty of families going round and round until we found it:

At least it gave me a chance to enjoy the views of the castle:

And appreciate some of the wonderful flowers growing there:

Finally I spotted the Japanese flag and we could escape back towards the lake:

Several countries later we made it to the Dutch garden which had some lovely floral borders:

There was plenty of time to photograph these as my son had to count how many pyramid shaped trees there were:

After all that effort it was time to go and collect his just reward back at the start from magic chest:

Wish I could knit like the people involved in the project! I then persuaded my son to spend time at the bird hide where he helped me spot various birds including this fast moving nuthatch:

and beautiful greenfinch:

We had got pretty hot during the trail so headed inside the castle to do the indoor trail. My son opted for the easiest version where he just had to find the chicks hidden in the rooms. At least it made him stop a look a bit:

Some of them were easier to find than others:

Its good that they do these extra trails as it means that my children are more keen to go and visit as its different every time. I wonder where we will do our trail next Easter as we will be in Cornwall so it will be somewhere completely new!